everquestfandomcom-20200214-history
Jousting
Jousting is a form of melee kiting in which the player character's pattern of movement loosely mimics the motions of a jousting knight from a medieval tournament. After creating distance between oneself and a mob, the player charges the mob, executes one or two melee combat rounds (usually with a two-handed weapon in order to maximize this burst of damage), and uses all available special attacks. With that done, the player then moves away from the mob as fast as possible and allows ability cooldowns to refresh before circling around to repeat the process. When combined with abilities that stun mobs on demand, jousting can be successfully performed without taking much, if any, damage. Leap abilities make it easier to create distance again after delivering the burst of melee damage, and snare abilities make the kiting phase of the tactic much easier (or, in some cases, possible at all). Usage by Class While jousting is relatively uncommon in EverQuest, it does see some use. Berserker Jousting is an important fall-back tactic for berserkers and is fully available to that class (with both stun and snare abilities available for use) from level 16 onward. At high levels the tactic comes into its own as a method for the berserker to molo foes that deal too much DPS for a cleric merc to provide adequate healing if the berserker tanks toe-to-toe. To joust effectively, the berserker maintains snare on the target and then uses subsequent cooldowns of that skill timer for stunning instead, darting in to dole out melee autoattack swings, Frenzy, and anything else that is available, while the opponent is unable to act. Once acquired at later levels, damaging axe-throw volley abilities can be integrated into the kiting process. Simple autofire attacks with throwing axes while circling around at range can also help the process along. Rogue Rogues of level 20 and above can use Make Poison to create their own tools for jousting reliably. To do this well, the rogue will need a good-sized stock of both Paralyzing Poison (for its snare effect) and Strike of Ssraeshza (for its predictable burst damage). To perform the joust, the rogue applies the classic-style paralyzing poison and the first charge of Ssra prior to engaging, sneaks up behind the target, and opens with a Sneak Attack, backstab and autoattack in that order. The first autoattack delivers the payload of both poisons at once, and the rogue takes a round of combat damage in return. The rogue then kites away from the mob and consumes another Ssra to prepare the next blast, and then darts back in quickly to deliver it. This process is then repeated until the foe is dead. Obviously this gets expensive after a certain point, but the high damage potential of Ssra poisons generally allows foes to be jousted down with good speed. At later levels, the Rogue's Ploy line (61+) can be used to perform an additional round of jousting without actually needing to kite around, and the Poison Spikes Trap line (70+) can be used as an expense-free alternative for providing the needed snare. The Waylay line (76+) provides a stunning alternative way to begin fights, allowing more Ssra bursts to be delivered with less damage taken in return. Paladin Paladins can also make use of the tactic by combining their root and stun abilities, falling back on their self healing in the event that they take damage. Their main disadvantage in the tactic compared to berserkers is that their killing speed can become intolerably slow this way, although against undead targets or single challenging foes needed for completing a particular quest, this may be less of an issue or at least rewarding enough to feel worthwhile. Shadow Knight Though lacking a stun, Shadow Knights can also incorporate jousting into their soloing of difficult foes. Lifetaps provide self healing to recover the inevitable damage, while DoTs continue to provide DPS even while not in melee range of the mob. Optimization Generally speaking, jousting increases the kiting character's safety at the expense of DPS, but there are some things that can be done in order to mitigate the DPS loss. For most non-rogue jousting classes, one of the more substantial things that can be done is to carry around a strong autoriposte two-hander with extremely high damage and correspondingly high delay, and to use this weapon when jousting, since the autoattack delay will have plenty of time to refresh itself between charges, and the intermittent swings will make good use of the weapon's high base damage and damage bonus. Minor DPS clickies that may not even seem worth using in other situations also come into somewhat larger usefulness while kiting foes around. For instance, the DoT clicky from a Ring of Ill Touch adds one more source of ongoing damage to the arsenal of a jousting berserker or rogue.